Joy to the World!! It finally came!

Ok, I know everybody else in the whole world is preparing for Christmas. Ditto here. I even "almost" have lights on the Christmas tree. Most presents are bought, none wrapped...yadda, yadda.But I finally felt true joy when coming home today and finding the Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Catalog waiting for me. It's another cabin fever kinda weekend with rain Friday night and Saturday and cool damp conditions on Sunday. What better way to spend a weekend than laundry, lights on a tree (maybe ribbons and bows and balls as well) and planning your spring and summer seed order?!!? If you aren't already on their mailing list, well, I highly recommend them. Great customer service and just an incredible variety of seeds you really can't find at the more traditional outlets. In a pinch, even their websitewill make you feel like it's almost time for a summer tomato sandwich or BLT with mayo!We have so much planned for 2014. I hope you have enjoyed 2013 as much as we have. Thank you for spending it with us!

It's amazing how the slightest efforts over time can pay off. Or maybe I should say, sometimes. Sometimes they pay off and sometimes the damn chickens get in the garden and scratch up your carrots. Pftttt. Go figure.

Saving seed is usually pretty straight forward....for instance a bell pepper. Scrape out seed, let them dry. Store. Easy peasy.Not so with the beloved tomato.

Tomatoes come with a built in sprout inhibitor and need to ferment in order to easily separate the seed from the goo that surrounds them and achieve a better germination rate.Yes.... "Goo" is a technical term.

I'm on a roll -- I'm certain this obsession with the blueberries should end, but the reality is that unlike okra (which I am SICK of seeing, picking, freezing, pickling, frying and eating), I never get tired of blueberries. And they freeze so nicely in a ziplock freezer bag. Just rinse in colander and VOILA! fresh from the freezer blueberries.

Saturday was potato harvest day and my mom came to help gravel potatoes.

Not bad at all for $1.50 seed potatoes and $40 for materials ~ ~ mainly mushroom compost and wheat straw. Stay tuned for the BEST red potato salad recipe.There's a secret ingredient that had them coming back for seconds.

Last year, early June, I almost broke my arm patting myself on the back."Good job" says I. "Fruits of your labor"....pat, pat, pat.

And then I was robbed. Robbed of the fruits of my labor and harvested ZERO yellow summer squash. Nada. A big fat goose egg.

This was a painful pill to swallow. Yellow summer squash in the south are as plentiful as mosquitos. They are a never fail, any idiot can grow them vegetable. Or so I thought.

To add insult to injury, the pumpkins suffered the same heinous death. Honestly, all was going so beautifully, and the plants were blooming and ready to produce their little bundles of joy. The garden was all green leaves and big POPS of yellow squash blossoms.

And then this happened. Overnight. Poof. Wilted. Gone.

Online research (cause you can believe anything if its on the internet) pointed to a creature so gross it will cause nightmares.

See? Nightmares.And just like potatoes, ya have to go digging around to find them. They don't live in plain sight, oh no. They bore into the stem of the plant and go to town on the all you can eat buffet until the plant is separated from its roots. Yea, you can water that poor wilted to the ground squash all you want...it's too late.

So what's a poor squash deprived farm girl to do? I don't generally use pesticides, and how in blazes you would get poison into the assheads anyway is above my pay grade. They are in the stem--crimini!Row covers? Oh go pollenate by hand cause bees can't do it for you now that you covered the flowers. Wrap the stems at the base with tin foil---seriously? Who has time for this? The one thing I did do differently this year was add mulch/dirt to the stems of the pumpkins as they branched out. The yellow squash don't really "run" like pumpkin vines so the only thing I really changed there was ample tilling of the ground prior to planting which supposedly kills the grubs buried in the ground waiting to turn into moths which lay eggs which turn into heinous creatures to wreak destruction on your efforts and then bury into the ground again. See a pattern here?

BUT LOOK!!!There's baby squash growing!! Maybe I'll get a few this year after all.(pat, pat, pat)

Kelley Creek Farms is a small (micro really) hobby farm located in Central Alabama 30 minutes south of Birmingham. We raise heritage and rare waterfowl and poultry along with a myriad of other creatures that give the farm its life. In addition to the birds, we raise heirloom tomatoes and vegetables.

Each day is different and brings a new set of adventures. Some make you laugh and some make you cry. Some are just plain frustrating. But we persevere knowing that tomorrow's set of problems will be completely different than today. Still figuring all this out ....one day at a time and striving for a more sustainable way of life.